To See the Sea That Isn't So Much a Sea as a Desert

2 June 2009

Moynaq, Uzbekistan

Limped into Beynau, home to much mud. And actual traffic lights, very exciting. The truck was fixed after all that ado, dirt and water in the fuel all gone, and we stayed in an unexpected hotel. Six adults in a room, and of course I didn't hesitate to immediately seize the only real bed, consigning Alan and Rachel to a sofa bed and Emma and Amy to the floor. Am not a team player.


Steve and Alan ventured out to sort a meal, while the rest of us bathed for the first time in three days. My hair was at the stage where it could be styled and stay in place without aid of any sort of implements. And smelt divine. The dining options in Beynau are limited, and our boys were further limited to what they could order in Kazakh and/or point to in Steve's little book of useful pictures for travelers. Shashlyk (kebab) and fried eggs it is, with a bowl of tea. Possibly the nicest eggs ever, the boys and their grunting and pointing came through for us.

             

Drove the last 90K of Kazakhstan (thank god) to the border of Uzbekistan. Have been looking forward to Uzbekistan very much, this being the heart of the Silk Road, and home to Bukhara, Khiva, and Samarkand, places that evoke images of caravans and heavy silks and sandstorms. Which in fact are not as fun as one might think. The first one was a novelty, the next eight not.

Uzbekistan is 110% better than Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is flat and empty—there's a reason we're the first overlanders to have done it.

               

Stopped last night to collect a new guide, called Mansur, and stayed in a series of tea houses, with rooms off the gardens. They all had little cafes, with low tables and wide divans surrounding them. The accommodation was limited but clean; the bathing facilities were phenomenal. Two rooms, both hot as a sauna, the outer a dressing area and the inner with a huge tin vat full of steaming hot water, surrounded with hot stones. A tin basin on a table next to another vat of lukewarm water, you use a scoop to fill the basin with very very hot water tempered by some lukewarm, and wash away the dust and sand of the desert. Absolutely gorgeous. I think the Uzbeks who showed it to us may have thought us slightly slow, as we all needed instructions in bathing ourselves; to be fair, it didn't look as appealing as a nice German hot shower, but ultimately proved far superior.

Today we've driven down to Kungrad, a market town. Lunch on the side of the road in the first grove of tree-like objects we've had in days. Nicest pee in ages, as had some privacy. In the desert, we're lowered to the girls lining up on one side of the truck and squatting. Nice.

Post lunch, we've come to Moynaq, which until the 1970s was a big port on the Aral Sea. As you are no doubt aware, the Aral is a disaster on a colossal scale. From the 1950s, the Russians drained the fourth largest lake in the world to irrigate cotton fields in the deserts of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (textiles really are evil.) The end result is that the port of Moynaq is now 150K from the sea, which is mostly gone. The environment is destroyed, dust and erosion everywhere, industry vanished, and the impact on health is a nightmare for these people. One in ten infants dies here, tuberculosis is rampant, and pesticides from the cotton cause birth defects. Stupid Russians.


We stopped for a wander among the rusting ships that are all that remain of the port; a little old Uzbek granny told us through her granddaughter that she remembers the sea, where now it's just dunes and scrub. Bush camping tonight next to one of the last remaining channels dug to access the Sea as it withdrew, so a bit of water. And loads of strange pre-adolescent boys swarming around us. We are a novelty.